The overemphasis of switching around schedules of days of the week is an overall detriment to quality of life for Baruch College students.
It’s incredibly unfair to students who work as many students specifically built their work schedule around the classes they’re taking. The rest of the world doesn’t understand or care that it’s a Monday schedule for Baruch students; it still functions as a Tuesday. The students must decide to either miss class and fall behind because they have work or try to figure out how much money they’re willing to lose to attend their classes. Some professors don’t even hold class, in which case it’s the same situation as if there was no change at all.
If a student has multiple classes in one day, they could possibly have one professor that’s holding class and one that’s not. If these classes are close together, that could cause a significant reduction in quality of life for them as the student would have to come in for just one class.
Considering that 98% of Baruch students don’t live in Baruch’s dorms and some students spend as much as two hours commuting in just one direction, there is a significant hassle for such a small benefit.
It makes sense for there to be a desire for an equal number of hours between classes from the financial perspective of professors getting paid fairly and of students getting the number of hours they’re due, realistically, one class isn’t going to make a big difference. Taken over the course of a 16-week schedule, missing one class in a course that meets twice a week is just slightly above 3% of the class time, which can usually be made up internally through supplemental material.
Despite all the negatives that have come with it, COVID-19 has given many professors an avenue to have class material be presented to students without the need to be on campus. Most professors have a repository of pre-recorded lectures from those days that can easily be uploaded, instead of requiring students to come in. This way, there is no unaddressed concern for financial fairness and Baruch provides its students the value it is so well-known for without inconveniencing the student body.